What do you get when the worst band in the world is filmed by the world’s most inept documentary crew?

The answer is 30 minutes of comedy gold, still well-enough loved that hundreds of people want to celebrate it, 35 years to the week after it first appeared on the telly.

Bad News Tour was an episode of the first series of The Comic Strip Presents..., one of TV’s pioneering alternative comedy productions broadcast in January 1983 by the then-young and thrusting Channel 4.

Remebering it at the Bristol Old Vic on Sunday were Comic Strip regulars Nigel Planer (aka guitarist Den Dennis) and Adrian Edmondson (aka guitarist, vocalist and band leader Vim Fuego) - one half of the self-styled Four Horsemen of the Rock Apocalypse - with master of ceremonies Robin Ince, a comedian, presenter and self-confessed Bad News fan. And although Ince laid out his credentials as the most extreme of the “niche geek metalheads” in the auditorium, he did concede that one audience member had come from as far as Milwaukee in Wisconsin, USA, to be there.

Nigel Planer and Ade Edmondson on stage with Robin Ince at the Bristol Old Vic on Sunday, January 28 to discuss the Comic Strip's worst band in the world, Bad News. (Image: SWNS)

The event kicked off with a screening of Bad News Tour , the wannabe rock stars’ disastrous shot at fame which ends with a gig in Grantham in front of three men, a dog and a schoolgirl groupie (Dawn French) they have literally picked up off the street and dragged into their knackered old van.

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Edmondson and Planer then joined Ince on stage for a discussion, interspersed with clips from the 1988 follow-up More Bad News, which took the band all the way to the Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington - Britain's biggest heavy metal festival during the 80s. There they dodged urine and vomit-filled bottles on the same stage as metal legends Ozzy Osbourne, Motorhead and Def Leppard. All three had appeared on More Bad News to declare just how terrible Bad News were - but Edmondson revealed that, as the director, he had to persuade Ozzy et al to stop being nice and lay into them a bit more.

The footage showed why the Bad News films deserve to be part of a festival celebrating slapstick. One clip, of the late lamented Rik Mayall (aka talentless bassist Colin Grigson) treading in a dog turd on his way home from his secret day job as a banker, was lauded by Ince as the best treading-in-poo scene of all time.

Nigel Planer on stage at Bristol Old Vic on Sunday January 28 as part of the Slapstick Festival 2018, discussing Comic Strip classic Bad News Tour (Image: SWNS)

Among the themes frequently surfacing was how the collision of comedy and music predated the “comedy is the new rock’n’roll” cliché of the 90s - Planer remembered that, in the 80s, he and Comic Strip founder Peter Richardson (aka drummer Spider Webb) were once the support act for both Motorhead and AC/DC, while Edmondson revealed that he and Mayall once turned down an offer from Wham to open a gig for them at Wembley Arena.

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The elephant in the room was that other famous rock mockumentary This is Spinal Tap - or “f---ing Spinal Tap”, as Edmondson called it. Pointing out that Bad News Tour was released first, Ade admitted that other portrait of rock idiocy was a “fine film” but said: “Why couldn’t they have laid off for five years?”

Ade Edmondson on stage at Bristol Old Vic on Sunday, January 28, as part of the Slapstick Festival 2018, discussing two of the Comic Strip Presents... films he helped create, Bad News Tour and More Bad News. (Image: SWNS)

They didn’t have a lot of memories of Bristol to share from their days filming The Young Ones here, although Planer did remember the platform of Temple Meads station from their train trip to the University Challenge studios in the episode Bambi. But there were plenty of other gems from the Comic Strip years, including Mayall sitting on Brian May’s treasured guitar during the recording of a Bad News album and Joni Mitchell turning up on the set of a rock video Edmondson was directing, after several real bands were impressed by his Warriors of Genghis Khan video in More Bad News . She ran over, embraced him and told him she always went to Young Ones-themed parties dressed as his punk character, Vyvyan.

Recording with Brian May, hugs from Joni Mitchell, playing rock festivals and packing out a theatre 35 years on, to reminisce? Not bad for the worst band in the world.